Has anyone else actually had symptoms? I _think_ I've had the virus, but I can't be certain because testing is simply unavailable for most suspected cases in my area. Unless you have trouble breathing, are a health care worker, or have been travelling overseas, the health system is saying stay home in self-isolation for 14 days.

For me, the symptoms were fairly mild: went to bed on Mar 16th feeling fine, then woke up at 5am with a moderate fever, diarrhea (very unusual for me), a painfully sore throat, a headache, muscle aches in my arms, and strangest of all, a very strong bitter 'soapy' taste in my mouth. Most of the symptoms lasted about 3-4 days but the sore throat hung on for a week.

For the last week I've felt completely fine. As testing is just not available, I have no idea if this was COVID-19 or some other bug. Unless there is wide-spread antibody testing I'm not sure I'll ever know for certain.

I've been staying in my apartment and avoiding other folks. In theory I'm done with 14 days of self-isolation on Tuesday, but I'm planning to continue keeping to myself and working from home.

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Bruce Clarke - 2020 Yamaha XV250

Yes, that part was appreciated!

Apology accepted; it did indeed appear to me that your comment was aimed at me, which I didn't find particularly...fair. And while I read a lot of stuff online, by luck or design I don't see most of the crazy stuff, just widely differing opinions from a variety of experts. Just read another expert disagreeing with WHO's conclusion that the virus cannot spread by "air" as opposed to via droplets, etc. It seems we've got a long way to go on this one...

Two weeks ago my lone wolf call was for a potential return to normal by mid to late April.

Today, April 15, there is a rumor that Chancellor Merkel has stated that shops of up to 800 square metres in size will open again from this coming Monday onward while just about everything else by May 4th.

Is there anyone from Deutschland listening in that can confirm this for us?



If it is indeed true, then it seems extremely likely this decision will create a domino effect for other countries in the near future.

And, ignition keys may be making their way back into parked adv bikes around the globe shortly after – here’s hope’n

I find myself feeling a bit glum about all this "reopening" talk, and here's why: In my county, population 225k, there are ~260 confirmed cases with 25 deaths. The best-wild-guess ratio is 10 untested cases among the general population for every 1 confirmed case. That suggests that about one in every hundred of us has been infected, but 99 have not (yet).

Given how rapidly the virus spread, it's difficult for me to imagine any significant reopening which would not immediately put the uninfected 99% of us at significant risk. Yes, I know social-distancing-wearing-masks-contact-tracing and all the rest, but still: all indications are that my country, at least, is not really ready to deal with any of this.

Of course, there's this other part of me which wants to chime in with the hope that I'll be able to resume my twice-yearly vacation schedule late this summer. I just can't see any real evidence suggesting this will come to pass. My hopes are cheap and plentiful.

Mark

Edit to add: I got curious, as one does. In Italy, using the same 1:10 ratio assumption, 97+% of the population remains to be infected; in Germany, 98+% remains. There are a LOT of people still at risk.

Hi all,

Riel:
I am not from Germany but can confirm what you wrote about re-opening in Germany. It´s in the german newspapers and it´s also in line with the re-opening of other european countries.

I think most things will go back to normal in may/june in Europe.
But beware, I am talking about travel inside Europe. Europe was behind China getting the virus. America is behind Europe and will probably open later or Europe maybe opens later for overseas foreigners.
A big question is what will happen to other parts of the world, Central Asia, Russia, Africa, South America? Are they behind China-Europe-America? Is the situation there gone be as bad as in the previously mentioned countries only some weeks later?

In Europe they are trying to open slowly because they know if they open too soon things may get out of control again. On the other hand, I don´t think you can keep people inside their homes many months without getting revolt, especially when summer is coming. Also the fact that sooner or later the damage to the economy is more then the damage caused by the virus.

Regards, Rögnvaldur

Announced today - the UK government has extended lockdown for a further 3 weeks - it is interesting to note that our lockdown is not as tight as other European countries. They will delay further until a vaccine for Covid 19 had been developed.
AFAIK there has never been a vaccine developed for Coronavirus - SARS has been around for many years. So is herd immunity the only real way out?
The Portuguese population went into self directed lockdown well before their government demanded it and they have had a very low contract and death rate - will they get hit hard when they come out of lockdown?
In the meantime in the UK we have had a steady stream of victims but flattened the curve and it looks like the health service will cope if things continue as they are.

It’s still too early to say what will happen and whose approach will end up being the best. I suspect that, even though countries come out of internal lockdown, there will still be restrictions on foreign visitors ie business only, for a while yet.

Hopefully our trip through France and Spain will go ahead at the end August beginning of September but I’m not holding my breath.
Cheers

There's quite a few big spring / summer events being rescheduled into September now - the Tour de France for example - so mainstream thinking may be that it'll be ok by then. My August France/ Spain/ Morocco trip is off but that's mainly because of logistical issues that would have to happen in June / July.

The Tour De France is big business - 2nd biggest sporting event in the world, after the football World Cup. Even though foreign spectators boost the economy it will still make a lot of money without them. The riders can be classed as business men.
Unfortunately I don’t think our trip through France will be seen in the same economic bracket although we will do our best to boost the wine and cheese industries if they let us in
I hope you get to reschedule your trip - it sounds a good one.

The Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918 killed 20-100 million people and had a pass on rate (“R0 Value”) of 1.8 [Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4169819/] whereas the R0 value for Covid-19 appears to be between 2.25 and 3.5.

As this is a virus that spreads easily unless EVERY person is utterly isolated for weeks at a time with no contact whatsoever (except in their sealed bubble household) then it is going to continue to spread and remain as a virus like the cold that goes around the population all the time. The difference is that this one kills more than influenza or the cold.

In the real world we won’t be able to lockdown tightly enough to eradicate the virus because it is too spread out, people need to eat, people go to hospital, people break lockdown etc. The virus is going to be with us from now on I suspect, like flu, and is something we are going to have to live with. Realistically, the only route to avoid significant death tolls is to develop a vaccine AND to change our personal habits and the way that we live - there is going to be a new normal.

Sorry for being a little down on the subject, I am just trying to be realistic.

I read a current research paper (abridged) sorry I didn’t save the source but found it easy enough on non-academic Internet that proposed that the Spanish flu (SF) was fairly mild - the high fatality rate can be, possibly, put down to a world population weakened by WW1. This looks likely as, even though Covid 19 is far more contagious, the mortality % rate is a lot lower than SF - experts say that the population of Covid infected people is not known and is probably higher than conservative figures suggest.
Don’t forget also that the reason SF is called Spanish is because it was the only country to report it and keep records so the evidence base is sketchy to say the least.
Again, I’m not aware of any coronavirus vaccine and we’re at number 19 so these messages are somewhat confusing.
Without testing we will not know how many people have had it - I know a person who has had it (tested) and didn’t even know, I had the symptoms about 3 weeks ago. They were very mild and I carried on with my physical job but later when I saw what the symptoms were it made me think.
So herd immunity may well be on the way.
Also viruses usually mutate into a milder form and our antibodies can easily cope with these - I suspect SF is still around with no or little effect.

I’m not a “we’ll all be back to normal in 3 weeks” person, I think things will be difficult for 6 months or so ( longer financially) but...... these things have happened before and I certainly don’t believe it’s going to change the world - human nature hasn’t changed during recorded history - over 2000 years.
In 2 years it’ll back to the same old same old -

All these postings are based on guesswork at this stage.

Best to keep one's mind slightly open and wait further developments.

As a wise philosopher once said to me, "Mate, I've got two balls and neither of them are crystal balls".

And for my 10 cents' worth, I choose to believe little of what I read, some of what I am told, and most of what I see.

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Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.

There's an interesting, if rather extreme, mathematical example dating from the 13th century which aptly demonstrates the power of the R0 (reproductive) factor. This involves grains of wheat placed on a chess board; 1 grain in the first square, 2 in the second, 4 in the third, 8 in the fourth, and so on. By the time you get to square 32 you need to be placing 2 billion grains, and by the time square 64 is loaded up the chess board would be holding more than 1,000 times the entire annual global production of wheat.

If, however, the multiplication factor is only 1.2 rather than 2 the final square only needs 97,000 grains.

If the R0 can be kept below 1, then numbers of new cases will decline but starting to decline still means they are going up. The balance between new cases and recovered then starts to plateau but it takes several weeks for any appreciable movement. Finally (we hope) the active cases start to fall and the Italian statistics show this happening (shaded in green), but the rate of decrease is excruciatingly slow compared with the earlier rate of increase.

[Because of the delays involved in testing and reporting, these figures are historic, so it's likely the real numbers of active cases started to fall a week or more beforehand. The numbers also only track hospital cases and don't necessarily reflect what's happening with less serious cases in the general population.]

So this is real knife-edge stuff, the decline is so small that the room for manoeuver by the authorities is limited. I can see only minor relaxation in May in Spain, Italy and the UK and this will be focused (I believe) on preventing the total collapse of our economies rather than personal freedoms.

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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

There are already some voices demanding "normality", presumably believing the virus will affect others not them. It's going to be hugely difficult striking a balance that doesn't set us straight off on an upward trend again, particularly with a 5-10 days "invisible" phase. Any reaction will lag that far behind (probably double that, as nobody will react to a single day) so the potential is to go straight into a "rollercoaster" pattern. How much of that will be tolerable to the public, who have been very supportive of health services and won't want to see them repeatedly overwhelmed, is the question.

This is yet to be seen. For example norovirus causing stomach flu does not build long term immunity and herpes virus causing sore lips never goes away at least in some individuals.. papillomavirus is another example. We had several felines die from feline corona virus FCoV and we're told that it may never goes away and we shouldn't have new cats because they can get infected from survivers.

There are hundred+ people in Korea, Japan and China who after being negative and declared "cured" several weeks later tested positive again for covid19. Will surviving covid19 result in long term immunity? Will survivers be carriers after? Those are questions which need to be answered for sure.

Yeah, WHO's statement today that there is "no evidence" that CV survivors will have immunity is not exactly encouraging, but we'll see.